There was also a good deal of talk in Edinburgh society as to his mental condition, his mind, according to many intimate friends of the Grahams, being at times decidedly unhinged.

Be that as it may, I fancy that his life must have been a very sad one; he had lost his mother when quite a baby, and his father seemed, strangely enough, to have an almost unconquerable dislike towards him.
"Every one got to know presently of David Graham's sad position in his father's own house, and also of the great affection lavished upon him by his godmother, Lady Donaldson, who was a sister of Mr.Graham's.
"She was a lady of considerable wealth, being the widow of Sir George Donaldson, the great distiller; but she seems to have been decidedly eccentric.

Latterly she had astonished all her family--who were rigid Presbyterians--by announcing her intention of embracing the Roman Catholic faith, and then retiring to the convent of St.Augustine's at Newton Abbot in Devonshire.
"She had sole and absolute control of the vast fortune which a doting husband had bequeathed to her.

Clearly, therefore, she was at liberty to bestow it upon a Devonshire convent if she chose.

But this evidently was not altogether her intention.
"I told you how fond she was of her deformed godson, did I not?
Being a bundle of eccentricities, she had many hobbies, none more pronounced than the fixed determination to see--before retiring from the world altogether--David Graham happily married.
"Now, it appears that David Graham, ugly, deformed, half-demented as he was, had fallen desperately in love with Miss Edith Crawford, daughter of the late Dr.Crawford, of Prince's Gardens.